Organizations currently use complex networks comprised of multiple resources, such as internal network applications, internet applications and operating systems, with an administrator needing to enter a username and password for each user application being accessed. In some cases, there can be tens to hundreds of different applications with associated usernames and passwords. Not only is manual entry of logins and passwords time-consuming, it is also extremely difficult and time consuming for the administrator to remember or consult a file containing a multitude of passwords.
In one example, a user may contact the administrator with an issue (e.g. a virtual machine is down). The administrator may need to perform several steps, including login in to the user's portal from the administrator's portal, and may run into difficulties by not having the permissions of the user to execute each command needed to log in to the user's portal and to execute each of the user's applications (since the administrator may not have the appropriate permissions for the given application). Resolving the issue may take much valuable administrator time and lower the productivity of both the administrator and the user.